And you can also have tell Tivo not to collect ANY statistics on your viewing habits at all either. Most Tivo users don't do that though because the statistics collected are aggregate and not individual and hopefully will eventually let tv programmers and advertisers know what we like.
All of the news stories lately blasting the Tivo's "profiling" seem to ignore these two points.
It's a good thing that's not the only reason you didn't choose Tivo - I would have to call you a nutcase if it were.
BTW - Tivo can also pull program information over your network - the Series2 include USB ports you can add a $10 ethernet adapter to. Works great. And web-scheduling is coming, but I'm not holding my breath.
Then you can vastly improve the life of the hard drive in your PVR
You'd think that's true, but so far Tivo drives fail no faster than drives in normal desktop machines. When Maxtor was asked about having the drives constantly spinning in the Tivo they said it shouldn't be a problem, and it actually helps that it doesn't keep spinning up and spinning down. (This is hear-say of course, but it was a reliable source. Search tivocommunity.com if you want to know more.)
Also, buffering live TV is great. How do you know when you're watching live TV if you're going to want to do an instant replay? You don't know beforehand. Luckily on my Tivo I can always hit instant reply or even rewind, even when I wasn't thinking I was going to want to. Those cycles are hardly "wasted". If they weren't being used to buffer live TV they'd probably just used by the 'idle' process, which is even more of a waste.
The Philips 312 is a Series 1, right? I've heard that a faster drive will help in those, but most people report seeing no real difference on the Series2 with a faster drive. The menus are really snappy already, probably a result of more RAM and faster CPU.
Re:The User Interface, or lack there of...
on
Build Your Own Linux PVR
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I believe replacing the hard drive in TiVo is difficult and expensive...
Difficult? Absolutely not, especially for the types that hang out here.
Expensive? No more expensive than upgrading the hard drive in your custom box. This week I'm quadrupling the size of my $200 40hr Tivo with a $100 120GB samsung drive (5400 is better for the tivo, as it runs cooler and quieter, and a faster spindle speed gives no advantage).
I experimented for a long time with building a custom PVR, but now that I finally have a Tivo, I have no idea what took me so long. It seriously is awesome.
The alternative to using cookies is not tracking by IP address, but passing some session variable around every request. Yes, it's a pain (unless you use a framework that will handle it for you). Yes, it doesn't always work. I don't know of ANY web developer that would even consider tracking someone based on IP address, for the reasons you stated.
I use mbx personally (NOT mbox) and it scales wonderfully. The mailbox is fully indexed to speed up searching and can be accessed simultaneously by various processes. See here for more information.
I worked in an auto insurance-related field for 3 years doing research on different companies underwriting and rates, and never once found a company that charged more to insure a car based on color. In fact, I believe this is a well-perpetuated myth. If you have a solid example of a company that surcharges for red cars, I'd love to know who it is.
I hear that red cars may (and probably do) get pulled over more often, which will their insurance, but they're not charged more initially by the insurance companies.
Tivo doesn't re-record episodes it already has recorded. It looks at the schedule to see which episode is being aired and compares that to ones already saved.
No, I don't think you can make it any shorter even by removing that call. The program is 45 bytes, and the 45th byte is required to be there (a critical part of the ELF header), or else it won't execute at all.
You sir are the one that doesn't understand. His suggestion is to watch the DirectTV feed (which is delayed 6 seconds) and listen to the radio feed (which isn't delayed) through the Tivo, using the Tivo to delay the audio.
No, you just say "random data is incompressible". That's the GENERAL case. Besides, your 500 1s followed by 500 0s is very uncompressible using my algorithm that counts runs of the sequence "10".
Summary: In general, random data is incompressible.
Postgres and MySQL seem to think that "dumping" is a good enough form of backup. In real life and in real enterprises, that sucks. RMAN can be a beast to work with, but when you have a media failure you'll sing sweet praises its name while the postgres guy next door will be searching for the last time he ran a full db dump...
Slashdot Mirror
People need to get this through their heads:
YOU CAN TURN OFF TIVO SUGGESTIONS.
Easily.
And you can also have tell Tivo not to collect ANY statistics on your viewing habits at all either. Most Tivo users don't do that though because the statistics collected are aggregate and not individual and hopefully will eventually let tv programmers and advertisers know what we like.
All of the news stories lately blasting the Tivo's "profiling" seem to ignore these two points.
It's a good thing that's not the only reason you didn't choose Tivo - I would have to call you a nutcase if it were.
BTW - Tivo can also pull program information over your network - the Series2 include USB ports you can add a $10 ethernet adapter to. Works great. And web-scheduling is coming, but I'm not holding my breath.
Then you can vastly improve the life of the hard drive in your PVR
You'd think that's true, but so far Tivo drives fail no faster than drives in normal desktop machines. When Maxtor was asked about having the drives constantly spinning in the Tivo they said it shouldn't be a problem, and it actually helps that it doesn't keep spinning up and spinning down. (This is hear-say of course, but it was a reliable source. Search tivocommunity.com if you want to know more.)
Also, buffering live TV is great. How do you know when you're watching live TV if you're going to want to do an instant replay? You don't know beforehand. Luckily on my Tivo I can always hit instant reply or even rewind, even when I wasn't thinking I was going to want to. Those cycles are hardly "wasted". If they weren't being used to buffer live TV they'd probably just used by the 'idle' process, which is even more of a waste.
Well, Tivo is technically a Linux PVR, and it uses a dedicated encoder card, so no, not everyone relies on the CPU for en/decoding.
The Philips 312 is a Series 1, right? I've heard that a faster drive will help in those, but most people report seeing no real difference on the Series2 with a faster drive. The menus are really snappy already, probably a result of more RAM and faster CPU.
I believe replacing the hard drive in TiVo is difficult and expensive...
Difficult? Absolutely not, especially for the types that hang out here.
Expensive? No more expensive than upgrading the hard drive in your custom box. This week I'm quadrupling the size of my $200 40hr Tivo with a $100 120GB samsung drive (5400 is better for the tivo, as it runs cooler and quieter, and a faster spindle speed gives no advantage).
I experimented for a long time with building a custom PVR, but now that I finally have a Tivo, I have no idea what took me so long. It seriously is awesome.
RMS.
The alternative to using cookies is not tracking by IP address, but passing some session variable around every request. Yes, it's a pain (unless you use a framework that will handle it for you). Yes, it doesn't always work. I don't know of ANY web developer that would even consider tracking someone based on IP address, for the reasons you stated.
I use mbx personally (NOT mbox) and it scales wonderfully. The mailbox is fully indexed to speed up searching and can be accessed simultaneously by various processes. See here for more information.
Odd man out?
Windows market share on servers in 2001: 49%
Windows market share on desktops in 2001: 93%
You've got a real screwed up definition of "odd man out".
I worked in an auto insurance-related field for 3 years doing research on different companies underwriting and rates, and never once found a company that charged more to insure a car based on color. In fact, I believe this is a well-perpetuated myth. If you have a solid example of a company that surcharges for red cars, I'd love to know who it is.
I hear that red cars may (and probably do) get pulled over more often, which will their insurance, but they're not charged more initially by the insurance companies.
The point was, he said he didn't know how it would do it, while the Tivo does it, so it's possible.
Tivo doesn't re-record episodes it already has recorded. It looks at the schedule to see which episode is being aired and compares that to ones already saved.
"So you're saying there's a chance!!!"
(Name that movie...)
What if you're sent a sequence of 100 Z pieces?
No, I don't think you can make it any shorter even by removing that call. The program is 45 bytes, and the 45th byte is required to be there (a critical part of the ELF header), or else it won't execute at all.
You sir are the one that doesn't understand. His suggestion is to watch the DirectTV feed (which is delayed 6 seconds) and listen to the radio feed (which isn't delayed) through the Tivo, using the Tivo to delay the audio.
Moderators, please mod parent down.
You're 4 years too late with that comment, bud.
No, you just say "random data is incompressible". That's the GENERAL case. Besides, your 500 1s followed by 500 0s is very uncompressible using my algorithm that counts runs of the sequence "10".
Summary: In general, random data is incompressible.
And what compression method will you be using to compress truly random data 2:1?
(Answer: None, since it can't be done, as far as we know.)
Does it bother anyone else that the creator of the encryption scheme that will save the world uses AOL? (check his email addy...)
The RIAA has no jurisdiction. It's not a government institution. It's a company.
It all depends on how you define "best".
Sure, but generally they don't. And that's the point. Any ISP can monitor your traffic but so far cable providers are the only ones that do.
reap what they sew
I believe you'll find the expression is "reap what they sow".
RMAN.
Postgres and MySQL seem to think that "dumping" is a good enough form of backup. In real life and in real enterprises, that sucks. RMAN can be a beast to work with, but when you have a media failure you'll sing sweet praises its name while the postgres guy next door will be searching for the last time he ran a full db dump...